


death is (a cold, blindfolded kiss)

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 20:37:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: Eleanor, this place is just sand. It cannot love you back.Max's love for Eleanor, through life and death.





	death is (a cold, blindfolded kiss)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Emphasis' by Sleeping At Last. (Side note: Even though this fic is completely unrelated to [and swallow darkness whole](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14480733), my fic about Miranda's death, I see this as a companion fic of sorts to that. If you read both, you will hopefully see what I mean.)
> 
> Warning: There are some non-explicit references to Max's canon rape in S1.

Max watches Death walk towards Eleanor. She watches Death kiss Eleanor. She keeps her eyes steady on Eleanor’s back as Eleanor falls.

The tavern is packed to the front door with people who want to watch Eleanor die. They whoop and cheer and roar with satisfaction, and Max feels nothing.

This is her production. She chose the man who would play Eleanor and gave that man Eleanor’s clothes to wear, knowing how it would make everyone laugh to hear his falsely pitched voice. A man playing at being a woman who played at being a man, trying to run this island the way she did even though it was no woman’s place. And oh, how the audience did _laugh_. They laughed as they had always longed to laugh at Eleanor but never truly dared while she held this island together with her own two hands.

Max chose the girl who would play Death, too. One of her own from the inn. She painted the girl’s skin black herself, black as a night sky that has swallowed the moon. She directed the girl’s slow descent down the stairs, and the kiss.

And now she watches with a cool impassivity she learnt from Eleanor, and does not allow herself to remember even for an instant the warmth of Eleanor’s lips upon hers.

This is merely a rehearsal, she thinks, for that ever-nearing moment when someone will walk through her door and tell her that Eleanor Guthrie is dead. She hopes that, when the time comes, her real performance will have some semblance to her rehearsed one, but it is not, if she is being honest with herself, a very high hope.

* * *

“I could teach you French,” Max says, her fingers unbuttoning Eleanor’s leather vest, idly, without real purpose yet. “I think I would be a wonderful tutor.”

Eleanor smirks. “You’ve certainly taught me many delightful things already.” She presses her mouth to Max’s, eager and hot. Everything about Eleanor is hard and bright. It is like having the sun in your eyes, to look at her.

Max laughs into their kiss. She is so happy. She never thought she could be this happy. But she has this radiance in her arms, in her bed, and it is all she wants. “Ma cherie,” she says— _sings_ , almost. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“My darling,” Eleanor says, then rolls her eyes fondly, and Max laughs again. It sounds so much less beautiful in English.

They share more kisses and undress each other lazily, because it is one of those days which seem to stretch forever like the sea, and then Eleanor says, “You know, if I’d grown up in England I would probably know how to speak French by now. But obviously I’ve spent the days of my youth here doing far more important things.”

“Like throwing brutish pirates off your island,” Max says.

Eleanor grins. Her hands are on Max’s breasts, teasing Max’s nipples, and Max’s breath catches in her throat. “Like figuring out this is something I can do,” Eleanor says, and one of her hands slides down along Max’s belly and dips between Max’s legs.

Max wriggles into Eleanor’s touch, her body relaxed and full of joy. “Would you not have figured this out had you grown up in England?”

Eleanor shrugs, her thumb drawing sparks of pleasure from Max. “Maybe. Maybe not.” She bites a kiss into Max’s shoulder. “More likely than not I’d be the wife of some boring pompous ass by now. Sitting demurely in a parlour with the other wives, embroidering and engaging in meaningless chit-chat, while the men get to actually _exist_.” Her fingers slip inside of Max and twist up, _hard_ , and Max’s entire body trembles.

She reaches for Eleanor’s wetness in turn, delighting in Eleanor’s gasp. “Somehow I cannot imagine you could ever be _demure_.”

Eleanor snorts. “Me neither.”

“I prefer to think that you would have been trouble even in England,” Max says and kisses Eleanor’s jaw, sloppily because she does not feel the need to be perfect here, in this moment. “You would be trouble anywhere, Eleanor Guthrie.”

And she feels, as she is uttering those words, that she is secretly asking for a promise, for Eleanor to always be so _boundless_. As the sky; as the wind. As every fact of nature that permeates the world, powerful and assured in its existence, heedless of all else.

* * *

“When Jack and I had the chance to leave Nassau, we tried to think of where we might go. I couldn’t picture any other life but the one I’ve had.”

The night is deep, and Anne is in Max’s bed, and there is nothing in between them anymore. Max thinks of a different day in this room, a lifetime ago. The roughness of the floor beneath her knees. The tenderness of two hands she could not hold onto.

Softly, she says, “I once asked Eleanor to run away with me. I didn’t imagine, either, where we might have gone. I only thought: anywhere, with her. Anywhere.” She pauses, combing her fingers through Anne’s long, straight hair. “Do you believe you and Jack could have found some kind of life, somewhere in the world?”

“He would’ve been fucking miserable anywhere else. I could’ve left, maybe. But not him.”

“I do not know where else in the world I might have built so much,” Max murmurs. “But it is truly miraculous that I have built what I have, even here. I think if the fates were to roll their dice once more, none of this would exist again.”

“ _You’re_ the miracle,” Anne says, quietly, firmly. Her hand finds Max’s in the dark. “Fuck the fates, whatever the hell they are. You wrestled ‘em and you won. You made what you made. You’re here.”

Max smiles, even though Anne cannot see. “I’m here,” she echoes, squeezing Anne’s hand. “All that time ago, when we were sitting in that cave counting pearls, I did not believe that I could leave this place, even for you. But now I know I could. If you wanted to leave, and if you wanted me with you, I could go anywhere. I would be willing to be penniless with you if you asked.”

She had been penniless before and survived. She had been penniless and _alone_ for a long time in her life and survived. How much easier it would be to do it with someone she loved.

“I wouldn’t ask that,” Anne says gruffly. “But Paris was one of the first places I thought of, back then. And I thought, fuck, I still can’t speak French. Apart from understanding bits of what you said sometimes. And then I was thinking about you. About being in a strange city and hearing all these voices saying words I would’ve only heard in your voice before.”

Max strokes the curve of Anne’s ear, the shape of it made more precious by its invisibility in the dark. “Ma cherie,” she whispers.

“You should teach me French properly,” Anne says. “Then if one day— If we might go there, one day, I’d get by.”

“Bien,” Max says warmly, tucking her chin onto Anne’s shoulder. Briefly, she has a vision of being in a country she has never seen, with a woman who is no longer alive. She dreams of pastries flaking in their mouths, of leisurely walks in cultivated gardens. Then she laughs soundlessly, because even if she and Eleanor had run away together, it would have been a disaster. Everything would have disintegrated within weeks, if not days. They had not been equals. They could not have made any sort of life with each other.

But she and Anne are a different story. They have already made a life together. They have both reached for this life time and time again, even when it cost them, even when it was a great risk to do so; when its structure seemed unsound, when its foundation seemed shaky, they reached for it still, and with their two pairs of hands, they made it fast. Little by little, they replaced shifting sand with solid brick.

When they have done that once, they can do it again, anywhere.

“Tomorrow, mon amour,” Max promises, grateful as always for the surety that there will be a tomorrow, that the sun will rise on their bodies safely intertwined and undisturbed. “I will begin to teach you tomorrow.”

* * *

The windows to the south are shuttered, casting the office in a sombre shadow. Max supposes that it was an act of mourning on Eleanor’s part, though she cannot know for certain without asking, and she cannot ask, because Eleanor is gone. In all of Max’s memories, the office had been filled with light: it had been a huge space, almost limitless with those massive windows overlooking the streets of Nassau, as if the office sprawled far out into the town, and Eleanor was always limned in that light from the windows, backed by the sun itself.

Max wonders whether to open the shutters, but decides against it. She may have mourning of her own to do, soon. And she will let the room mourn, too, for the owner it has lost.

She surveys the office, mentally rearranging the furniture. She will need to transform the space significantly enough to make it her own, to erase this feeling of unease that she is trespassing on something she has no right to. Her gaze skitters over the iron gate to her right, behind which lies Eleanor’s bedroom.

Well, the bedroom too is Max’s now. The whole tavern is hers.

She will leave the bedroom as it is. She will not be sleeping here.

And so she has men come in to move the furniture according to her design. She takes down some of the paintings, removes some of the books from the shelves. She picks up knick-knacks, running her hands over each item—a lacquered box, a painted jar—and stores them out of sight.

Eventually, the room looks barely recognisable. And simply bare.

Frames sit on the floor, emptied of paintings, or waiting for something new. She puts a vase of flowers by her desk but it does little to liven the room. There had never been flowers here, before, and the room had been plenty vibrant enough, then.

She goes, finally, into the bedroom. It has been months. Unlikely that Eleanor will ever return. Little light penetrates here into this windowless part of the room. In the dusty gloom, Max regards the dim shapes cluttered along the top of the sideboard. Another collection of curiosities. A Grecian urn, a china teapot. Things from places Eleanor has never been, and will never go.

There is a chest where Max knows Eleanor keeps her clothes. She opens it. She cannot see much, but her hand touches worn leather.

At last, Max’s eyes are drawn to the bed at the end of the room. The curtain that veils the bed is half-drawn, and what lies beyond is too dark to be seen. Just for a moment, Max imagines that she has come in here to wake Eleanor. That she will pull the curtain back the rest of the way and see Eleanor’s sleeping figure, curled peacefully beneath a blanket, gently breathing, and she will shake Eleanor’s shoulder, and everything that has been so quiet in the world will be loud again.

* * *

“Are you happy?” Max asks Anne. She is holding Anne’s new coat as Anne puts her arms through the sleeves. The coat is green, the dark lush green of a forest that hides a great deal among its trees. Anne tosses her head so that her hair falls along the back of the coat. It looks lovely against the green.

“With the coat?” Anne asks, folding back the cuffs of her sleeves.

“No,” Max says, and swallows, nervously. “Are you happy, generally speaking?”

“Yeah,” Anne says. She turns to look at Max. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Max shrugs a little. “I am only asking because I want to be sure.” She takes hold of Anne’s hands. “I want more than anything for you to be happy, and if you are not, then you must tell me, if there is something I am able to do—”

“Where’s this coming from all of a sudden?” Anne is frowning.

Max takes a steadying breath. She knows exactly where it is coming from, but she does not want to look at it directly. She must, nonetheless. “When we were in Philadelphia, Marion Guthrie asked me if Eleanor was happy, and I didn’t know. I thought about it, and I could not answer. I thought I knew her well, but how could I have, when I cannot say whether she was happy? I tried to tell myself I only didn’t know whether she had been happy with Rogers, but I looked back at those months when I used to hold her in my arms, and I have not been able to conclude whether she was truly happy even then.”

Anne’s thumb rubs over Max’s. “Were _you_ happy?”

Max blinks, startled by the question. “Yes?” she says, hesitantly. Then, without any doubt: “Yes. I was.”

“Are you happy now?” Anne asks.

Max nods fervently. “Yes. _Yes._ There are times when my happiness feels so absolute that it overwhelms me and it chokes me, this... this _fear_ that all of it will shift again and crumble in an instant.”

“Me too,” Anne says, solemnly. “You wanna ask me if _you_ make me happy, right? I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. You know me. You _do_. And you know that I’m here ’cause being with you makes me happier than not being with you. You know that I chose this, even though I could’ve walked away, could’ve turned my back on you. I don’t stay ’cause I feel like I have to. I stay ’cause I see you”—one of Anne’s hands comes up to cradle Max’s cheek—“and I love you.”

Max feels on the verge of tears. She kisses Anne, and Anne kisses her, surely, deeply. The way Anne kisses is so familiar to her now that it is more like home than anything else she has ever had. It is more like home than the room they’re in, these four walls which have seen Max through ruin and through triumph.

The room, the building, the town around them, the island they’re on—these things are realer than they have ever been. But Max knows that they will never be as real as the intangible feelings that bind her and Anne. And she thinks back to the incandescent light of Eleanor in this same room, those luminous smiles she was able to draw out of Eleanor, and she knows that even if she had never been enough for Eleanor, what had tied them together for that brief period of time had been just as real, and Eleanor...

Eleanor had been happy, too.

* * *

“Your clothes,” Max says, opening the chest. “I kept them.”

Max’s eyes are heavy. It is late. They have been drinking together for hours. Talking of war, of unrest, of mistrust. Of the island fracturing even as they sat together in this office in the unspooling night. Max has been saying so many things that she knows Eleanor will not pay any heed to. She can see the path ahead of them, constantly narrowing and darkening, and inevitably drenched in blood. It doesn’t matter whose blood it is. It’s blood, all the same.

One thing they have not spoken of: the impending marriage.

She holds her candle out above the open chest. At the very top is a cream-coloured blouse with black embroidery on the shoulders, and a long charcoal skirt. Clothes that Max gave to a man to wear for a play, not so very long ago.

Eleanor takes out each garment and considers it with a shine in her eyes, half from all the rum they have been drinking, and half from something else.

Max does not know what she is hoping to accomplish here by showing Eleanor these clothes. It will change nothing. Eleanor will marry Rogers. She will be his wife. And Max will die without ever seeing Eleanor in that leather vest again.

In her lowest moments, she has thought of asking Georgia to put on these clothes for her in bed, so that she can unbutton that vest just once more. It is a damned foolish idea, and would reveal such weakness as Max does not even want to acknowledge she has. But she already knows that tonight she will go back to the inn and bury herself in Georgia’s body, her face in Georgia’s golden hair when she comes, forgetting for a second the passage of time, the unforgiving onward press of the months, one after the other, never ceasing. It has been so long since she has felt loved.

But seeing that shine in Eleanor’s eyes now, as Eleanor looks not at the clothes any longer but at _Max_ , she almost feels loved again. Feels illuminated, swathed in light.

“I’ll have someone take these to my room tomorrow,” Eleanor says.

“But you will not wear them,” Max says. The light vanishes. She is weary again—so tired, and suddenly bereft. “They are not the clothes of an English wife.”

“Maybe one day…” Eleanor says, then shakes her head, clearing away some unwanted thought. “Well, they’re mine, anyway. You kept them for me, didn’t you?”

Perhaps Max had kept them not for Eleanor, but for herself. Too late now, though. “Yes, of course.” She smiles, tightly, but even so, the terrible question escapes her mouth: “Do you love him?”

She has drunk too much. It is a night of one ill-advised thing after another.

“Yes,” Eleanor says, with not a moment’s hesitation and with steely determination in her eyes. Max does not wonder if Eleanor is lying to her, but she does wonder, just a little, if Eleanor is lying to herself.

But what does it matter? She closes her eyes. Eleanor had never used the word love with her. No one ever had.

* * *

Georgia still works at the inn. Max sees her around often, and she does not know how much time will have to pass before she will no longer stop short at the sight of her. And she cannot simply dismiss the girl for no reason.

Anne seems to understand why she flinches every time Georgia walks into her field of vision and makes no comment upon it, for which Max is thankful. But it has been months of this, and it is _absurd_. Max knows she is stronger than this.

“Augustus and I found this chest of Eleanor’s old clothes in the Governor’s house,” Idelle says, and the chest is set down with a heavy thud on the floor of the office. “I thought you might want it.”

Max stares at it, speechless.

Idelle adds, hurriedly, “If you don’t want it, I’ll get rid of it.” 

Max holds up a hand and inhales slowly. “No. It’s all right. I’ll… Thank you for bringing it to me.”

Idelle approaches her. “Hey,” she says, putting a hand on Max’s arm. “I know it’s still hard. You knew her better than anyone.”

“I didn’t,” Max begins to protest, but Idelle cuts her off.

“No, you definitely knew her better than that horrid _fuck_ Rogers did,” Idelle says, gripping Max’s arm insistently, emphatically. “You were her truest friend, and you stuck by her even when she was doing some stupid, reckless shit, and you loved her when she was stomping around this island in leather boots. You understood everything about her that Rogers never could.”

Max bites back a sob, and touches Idelle’s hand. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes!” Idelle says. “I remember how much you loved her. I was there.”

Max lets the tears fall, and her heart swells when Idelle hugs her. She wraps her arms around Idelle in turn. “God, how I miss her. She was so damned stupid and reckless and she never listened to me and I _miss_ her.”

“Of course you do,” Idelle says. “A woman like her is rare. But you know what’s even rarer? A woman like you. You’re incredible, Max. And I know you think you could’ve tried harder to save Eleanor, but you did all you could. You were a better friend to her than she could’ve ever hoped for.”

Max cries harder. Idelle’s embrace feels so good. So warm and generous, and full of love.

After a while, she lets go of Idelle and thanks her again. “Can you make sure no one disturbs me for a while?” she asks, and Idelle nods.

When Idelle has left, Max opens the chest and takes out the blouse, the skirt. The leather vest, the belt. She bars the door to the office and walks into the bedroom that she has never stopped thinking of as Eleanor’s, even though it has been a long time since Eleanor slept here. She takes off her clothes, and she puts on Eleanor’s clothes. The blouse, the skirt, the belt to hold it up. They do not fit too badly.

She fastens the leather vest around her torso, button by button.

And then she lies down on Eleanor’s bed and draws the curtain and allows herself to remember everything.

She wakes to the sound of someone pounding on the door. “Max? Max? You in there?”

She climbs out of bed. It is pitch black, a moonless night. It had still been light when she had retreated into the bedroom. She gropes her way to the door, surprised by how well she knows this room by now. She unbars it, and Anne crashes through.

“What the—” Anne sees Max’s attire in the light that spills from the tavern hall, and her gaze softens. “I was getting worried.” She runs her hand through Max’s bed-rumpled hair, and she cups Max’s cheek, brushing her thumb over the smeared kohl around Max’s eyes, the dried tear tracks on her face.

Max smiles. She knows it must be a watery smile. “I apologise,” she says. “I realised that sooner or later, I had to give in and permit myself the space to grieve. I must look a mess.”

Anne kisses Max’s forehead. “Mind if I come in?”

They light candles, and Max invites Anne into Eleanor’s bedroom, where they sit on Eleanor’s bed, shoulder to shoulder. “I know you didn’t like her very much,” Max says. “For extremely legitimate reasons.”

“I didn’t like _you_ very much, for a while,” Anne says.

Regret aches faintly in Max’s stomach. “I know,” she says, “and for that I am still—”

“No, wait,” Anne interrupts. “What I mean is: I didn’t like her, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also feel respect for her. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but Jack and I were planning to kill her. After what she did to Charles. But Jack… I know Jack had his doubts. ’Cause Charles loved her, and maybe he wouldn’t have wanted her dead, even if it was her that killed him. And I thought I understood that. ’Cause if it was you—no matter what you’d done to me, I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting you. But I might’ve killed Eleanor, if I’d had the chance, ’cause that was the plan. And it would’ve been me that caused you this grief.”

Max clenches her fists. She always knew that it might have been a possibility—it had been one of the things she feared, while Eleanor was alive. But it is still painful to hear out loud, from Anne’s mouth. What if Anne _had_ killed Eleanor? Would that have truly broken things beyond repair?

“But it didn’t happen that way,” Max says hoarsely, to herself as much as to Anne.

“No, it didn’t,” Anne says. “And I’m so fucking glad it didn’t. But... I dunno whether I could’ve gone through with it. ’Cause if it had come to that, I would’ve stood in front of her with a knife and remembered what she did for you, when you were in that tent.”

“What she did for me?” Max repeats, baffled. Her throat closes as it always does when she thinks of the tent, but she and Anne have spoken of it before, because Anne was anxious that Max might feel indebted to her—obliged, in some way, by what Anne had done, and Max had reassured her that this was not the case. Max did not say that it was Anne who had captured her for Vane in the first place. She only said that if there had been some kind of debt at the start, it had long been obscured by all the other times they had either hurt or saved each other along the way. Max could never forget that floor stained with Charlotte’s blood.

“I went to her for help to kill Hamund,” Anne says. “She was the one who came up with the plan to kill all eight of ‘em. It was the only way to make sure, but if it ain’t for her, I couldn’t’ve done it. I wouldn’t’ve dared to think of it. And in that moment, I felt as much respect for her as I did for Vane. As I do for Jack. For you.”

Max looks at Anne and starts to laugh, and her throat smarts with the rawness of the laughter, of this feeling rushing up inside her, a gratitude that feels exactly like anger. Of course. Of course it was Eleanor.

Anne looks at Max and says, “So. Hard to say if I could’ve looked Eleanor in the eyes and killed her, knowing that. I hated her, it’s true, but fuck, that woman was _something_. And I know she was even more than that, to you.”

They look at each other for a long while. “Thank you for telling me that,” Max says, as Anne gently strokes the nape of her neck, and then they just sit together in silence, their eyes drifting over everything in Eleanor’s bedroom in the flickering candlelight, wondering, despite themselves, about how differently things might have turned out in another world, until wordlessly Max reaches for Anne with both hands, and Anne reaches back, unbuttoning Eleanor’s leather vest for the last time.

* * *

Eleanor is dead.

It was one of the first things Flint said when he boarded the ship, and Max had closed her eyes. She had only just been crying, and she did not want to cry again, not in front of Flint. And the first feeling that sprang up inside her was rage, not grief. The Spanish—why did it have to be the Spanish? Eleanor had feared them above all else. Max knew how the memory of her mother’s death had haunted Eleanor. And _Rogers_ had brought the Spanish here. Eleanor’s own fucking husband. The man who was supposed to love and protect her.

She heard Jack say, “Hallelujah, good _fucking_ riddance.”

Max does not blame Jack, not even the slightest, for that callousness. She does not hate him for it. Eleanor had been a hard person to love, Max knows, and even harder to like.

When she opened her eyes, she caught Flint’s momentary glance in her direction. She remembered, then, how he had seen her on her knees once when she was still a whore, desperate for Eleanor’s love.

Now she stands on the deck while the men below discuss what to do next. What to do with her. She looks at the expanse of sea before her, boundless and free. Once, the sea had reminded her of Eleanor. But for the past year, it has been Anne she thinks of whenever she sees the ocean.

She had ridden halfway across the island hoping to save Eleanor, and she had failed. She had been trying to save Eleanor for far longer than that, and all the time she had been failing. She had been preparing herself for this outcome for so long, and yet.

And yet.

She thought she had stopped loving Eleanor. But she knows now that she had not. It had only morphed into a different kind of love, something less passionate and less tempestuous, but no less true.

_Where would we have gone?_

The question bounces around in Max’s mind, and she has no answer for it, just as Eleanor had no answer for her when she asked what would have been enough. 

How could goddamn _Rogers_ have been enough, and she not?

A sob rises in her throat. She cannot do this. She does not have time for this. She has to formulate a plan, to salvage this mess. To construct something out of this still-smoking debris. Eleanor is dead, but Anne—

She thinks of Anne’s red, red hair, and it kindles the rage in her again, burning the incipient grief to ash in her throat.

There is still hope. There is still hope, and she _must_ be enough for something, if not someone. She must be enough for Nassau, for this place of sand.

She will make it love her back.

* * *

When it dawns on her that Marion wants her to marry this man downstairs, the horror is a liquid feeling, the slosh of water in a ship’s hold where it should not be. Before she even considers it fully, she knows that nothing Marion can say will convince her. It does not matter how easy and how _rational_ this path back to her seat in Nassau is. She will not take it. She would rather leave Nassau behind forever, if that must be the price.

In her mind, three images overlap: Anne’s hands, so carefully bandaged by Max, that will be as scarred as Anne’s back; Eleanor’s hands, wrists cuffed in the same white lace as her veil, as she reaches for the man who will soon be pronounced her husband; and Max’s own hands, clasped around Eleanor’s wrists in supplication, and finally letting go.

_In that moment, I couldn’t find anything sharp enough to make the cut._

You _are the sharp thing, for me_ , Max says to the Eleanor who lives in her mind still. She looks down at the man whom Marion intends to be her husband, and she turns away from him just as she once turned away from the sight of Eleanor and Rogers kissing at the altar of a makeshift chapel. _You are the thing that will allow me to make the cut._

And she walks away from having a husband.

Oh, she wishes Eleanor could see her now, willing to throw away everything just to remain unmarried, when Eleanor had been willing to throw away everything for her husband. And somehow, these are not opposite things, but precisely the same.

The value of love above ambition. How ironic that it is Eleanor, in the end, who has led Max to this realisation. Led her _back_ to it, having been the one to make her forget it in the first place. But if she has travelled in a perfect circle to where she once started, the world is coloured differently now. She bears the weight of all that she has learnt along the way, and she has gained a clear-eyed understanding of just what love is. As she leaves the library alone and heads out into the cold, into the dark, she murmurs to a woman who is no longer there to hear it, “Thank you for teaching it to me.”

* * *

Max wakes earlier than Eleanor, as she does most days. She likes to look at Eleanor’s golden hair in the morning sun, the faint halo it makes. But today she wakes and is mildly disoriented, because it is not her room but Eleanor’s. She has never slept here before, and she dislikes it already. The bed is much too narrow, and there is too little light in here. The office beyond the gate looks much brighter.

She sits up and stretches her legs off the bed. Her foot nudges into the heap of their discarded clothes on the floor, and something jangles. She rifles through the clothes, pushing aside the leather vest, and finds Eleanor’s ring of keys, cool and heavy in her hand.

She smiles. Ah yes. This ring of keys. She has always loved the sight of it hanging from Eleanor’s belt. She twirls the ring in her hand and the keys clang together, sweet and discordant at the same time.

Eleanor grunts. “Will you stop that noise.”

Max turns, and tugs the blanket away from Eleanor’s body. Eleanor groans, displeased, and opens her eyes. “What the fuck are you doing?” she asks, and Max says nothing, only lowers the brass ring until the teeth of the keys brush against the skin on Eleanor’s belly. 

“Those are _mine_ ,” Eleanor growls, playful now.

“I _know_ ,” Max purrs, equally playful. “Queen of thieves.”

Eleanor shivers as Max draws the keys up around one of her breasts and over her nipple. “I could listen to you call me that forever,” she sighs.

“Queen of thieves,” Max whispers again, reverent and adoring, halfway in love, and even in this room where hardly any light reaches, Eleanor seems to gleam, more brilliant than anything Max has ever seen.

* * *

Max pushes open the doors to her office in the tavern. Here she is again, in the room from where she will govern her island, now that her grasp on it is finally as complete and secure as it could ever be.

She has really only been away a little while, but it feels as though it has been years since she last set foot in this room. Her skin crawls from how dark it is, how enclosed and coffin-like, with the windows all shuttered. She patiently opens each and every panel, and the room floods with a piercing light, almost white as snowfall.

She turns to her desk. Eleanor had disapproved of her moving it because the sun would blind her in the winter, and Max had never listened to that advice, too stubborn about staking her claim on the office.

She thinks about listening to it now. Altering the layout of the room again, letting it revert to what it used to be when Eleanor ruled this island. When Max was young, and the world was new. But the thought is a fleeting one, blown away quickly with the wind.

It is January. The air is cool for Nassau, but it feels so warm to Max after the snow-laden chill of Philadelphia. She sits down at her desk and lifts her head towards the windows.

It truly is blinding. She squints against it, and for a moment lets herself feel nothing except the light upon her face, something nearly as bright and searing as love.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are really appreciated. <3 Come find me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com) where I will always have endless feelings about Max and Eleanor and Anne.


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